Spiritual Practices for the New Decade

There is a fair amount of change on the horizon for me as a YAR. I seek to face the changes with a soundness in mind, body, and soul. When I look back at the times when I was the healthiest and times I was the unhealthiest………I see that one factor is whether or not I was doing one or more spiritual practices.

Do you have any spiritual practices (sometimes called spiritual disciplines or spiritual exercises) that you hope to pursue this next year or the next decade?

I’m thinking about the ones that I hope to do this year (or at least for the next little while) and my challenge is also to “not pick too many”.

Comments (3)

lukelmJanuary 2, 2010 at 12:05 pm

I find the greatest (and most powerful) spiritual practice to be conscious pursuit of “prayer without ceasing.” Rather than a discursive “conversation” with God, I think of this kind prayer as a constant placing of one’s situation and experience in relation to God. A good way to do it is to have a very short, meaningful phrase that can arise naturally at all times and which will help remind you of God’s presence in all things & at all times. My phrase (I didn’t really choose it, but somehow it came to be this way) is “thank you God” and to me it simply means that I accept everything that I feeling & experiencing at a particular moment as God’s will for me for that particular moment. If it becomes a habit it can help develop constant awareness of God’s presence.

I think for me one of the most important spiritual practices, which I often fail at, is to admit my need for God. I can easily tend to do things myself and begin to ignore God. This is not the way to do things.

Over the years, my spiritual practice has dwindled and left me with what has been the most consistently meaningful to me, which is a simple morning ritual of sitting in silence for a moment, and then saying to myself:
‘looking at the past day, starting from now and looking back, moment by moment, I take in all the good with gratitude, I attend to the shadows and what they might say to me, seeking healing, courage, and forgiveness.” This has been really beneficial in helping my move from one day to the next without forgetting the lessons of the past day. It’s a good way for me to keep my head clear.